The world is your extra juicy apple, at twenty.
You are one-of-a-kind, overly sweet, but the years,
like water on rock, erode the fringe. Then you are forty,
losing eyesight, gaining haunches. The years
lap up faster and the descent of summer to fall—it’s
a tangle of sandals and woolen scarves. You want nothing
more than to go inside now, but hunkering is not
an option, not on immaculate days like these. A
horse chestnut waltzes yellow and green, the mirage
of a new season. You wish you wanted to sprint across the
cut field, the absurdity of silage in October, but instead you blink,
bark at the sun. Aren’t you done yet? Beauty is too much of
a burden. This constant revelry only unearths an
urge to place the last garden’s cucumbers on each eyelid.